


just leave me your wake to remember you by

by SerenePanic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 11:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9547415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenePanic/pseuds/SerenePanic
Summary: When the Kerberos mission fails, Colleen Holt grieves.Her daughter does not.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Gregory and the Hawk's "Boats and Birds".

When the Kerberos mission failed, Colleen mourned her husband and son. She mourned her past, and she mourned the future, for herself and for her daughter. (Her wonderful, precocious, incredible daughter, who had just turned fourteen, and would never see her father or brother ever again. Who would never see her best friend ever again.)

Colleen Holt grieved.

When Katie did not grieve, Colleen worried, but let it be. Katie was freshly fourteen, and grieving would mean accepting that two of the most important people in her life were gone forever. Just because this was true didn’t mean Colleen wanted it to be. She had never wanted this for her daughter. How could she? All she had ever wanted for her children was that they would grow up happy and loved, not grieving and dead.

(Now Matt was gone, lost somewhere to the cold expanse of space, with his father and friend, never to come home and tease his sister or make inappropriate jokes or forget to clean his room or make faces at those damn peas ever again.)

Colleen forced herself through her grief, locking it up tight, hiding it far, far away. She couldn’t afford to wallow—there was a young girl who depended on her, and after _everything_ Colleen couldn’t afford to disappear on Katie now. It would not be Colleen’s fault that Katie lost anyone else.

But Katie did not grieve.

(Did not or would not? Did it even make a difference?)

And so Colleen waited. It had been barely two months, and all that Katie had changed was that now, she was angry. She would fight at school, in the neighborhood, with teachers and with friends. Katie’s rage was so great that when a day went by that she did not fight, Colleen was secretly surprised.

And so she waited even more. She waited for her daughter to come to her. She waited for her daughter to cry. She waited for her daughter to do literally anything else than just be overwhelmingly, blankly angry. She waited, and tried to let Katie know that she was still there, and tried not to get lost in her own pool of sorrow and loss.

(She waited for her daughter to show that the two of them were the same, that they both were hurt and sad and grieving.)

But Katie did not grieve. She did not break. She was angry, embittered, and gone.

(Colleen’s heart wailed. First her husband and son, and now her daughter, too? This wasn’t right this wasn’t _f a i r_ )

One night, she was here, sullenly poking at her potatoes, silent and withdrawn—not the Katie she had once been, but a Katie that Colleen was coming to well know—but still here. By the time Colleen came back from work the next day, Katie was gone, and in her place was a short note.

(An apology, but not an excuse. _I love you, but I can’t stay here right now. Iverson lied. I’ll see you soon_.)

(Katie is gone, gone, _g o n e_ )

And so Colleen waits. She waits for her daughter to come home. She waits for her heart to stop aching. She waits for a closure she knows will never come.

She mourns.

She weeps for her husband, for her son, and now for her daughter. She has lost two of them to the stars, and now the last is gone to her own destiny.

(To where? What was so important that Katie couldn’t find it here? Why did she have to go, too?)

Time passes achingly, crawling by clawed hands in Colleen’s heart. A year after Kerberos (a year without her husband, without her son), eight months after Katie _left_ (and there’s the kicker, right there—Sam and Matt left because they had a job that called them, but they had planned exactly when they’d be coming home. Katie left without explanation or a time frame), the Galaxy Garrison reports an accident on its grounds, claiming three missing cadets to be presumed dead.

(Colleen wants to scream. _Didn’t you learn? When will you stop taking our children and sending them to their deaths? They were children, they didn’t know what they were signing up for! What about their_ parents _, what do you tell_ them _?_ )

The TV plays in the background, words that Colleen can’t hear over her fury. When the Garrison says, “missing, presumed dead”, she has long since learned that those children will never come home. There will be no closure, just a cold-hearted apology from an organization that doesn’t care. Still, these _children_ deserve someone to remember them, and so she looks at the screen to see the school photos released “in case of a sighting”, and her heart stops cold.

Two of the cadets are strangers, smiling young boys who seem washed out on screen. The third—the _third_ —the third is her _daughter_. It’s _Katie_. Brilliant, wonderful, _missing_ Katie. Her hair is shorter, and the name given isn’t hers, but Colleen Holt would know her child anywhere. For a moment, she’s hopeful, and then she remembers why Katie is on TV in the first place.

_Missing, presumed dead._

(Colleen’s heart beats ever so slowly, ice rushing through her veins. She’s sitting on the floor. When did that happen?)

The Garrison has lost Colleen Holt Sam. It has lost her Matt. And now, she’s just coming to realize, it’s lost her Katie as well. The three of them, gone. Colleen has no hope for Katie’s survival. Her daughter is a survivor, it’s true, but she is— _was_ —a smart one, and if she was anywhere on this earth, she would have found a way to at the very least call her mother to let her know that wasn’t her. To let her know she was alright.

A year after losing her husband and son forever, Colleen Holt loses her daughter as well.

Colleen Holt does not grieve. She has no more tears to cry, but questions demanding answers.

(Why was Katie at the Garrison? What did she know that made her go there chasing answers? What was she looking for?)

Colleen Holt will find why her family was gone. She’ll find out whatever it was that made Katie leave. She is the last Holt, and Holts have never stopped searching out of fear.

(Colleen has nothing left to lose.)


End file.
